Paul Preston - Doves of War - Four Women of Spain

Her social life was hectic; late nights consisting of cinema, dinner, protracted dancing and drinking. On 6 and 7 December, she was given a tour around the German battleship Deutschland which she thought ‘a lovely boat’. On 20 December, Touffles and one of his German friends took her for a spin in a Junkers 52 bomber. Despite the distractions, she was becoming deeply impatient with Mercedes Milá’s failure to respond to her request to go to the front. She was all the more unsettled because of rumours about major action on the Aragón front – an echo of the Republican offensive against Teruel. As her Spanish improved and she got to know more people, her social life was coming to resemble her life in London albeit on a narrower scale. She had a couple of superficial flirtations, her blonde hair and blue eyes – and probably her plumpness too – making her very attractive to Spanish men. Finally, knowing that Princess Bea was in Burgos, she decided to leave the hospital at Jérez and make the hazardous eleven-hour 1000-kilometre car journey to join her for Christmas. It was a courageous – or irresponsible – initiative since attractive young women travelling alone in Spain were usually at risk from sexually frustrated soldiers. With typical self-reliance, she coped with running out of petrol on remote roads and the car’s sump springing a leak. 62

When, after driving for two days, she finally arrived at Burgos on 23 December, she could not find Princess Bea and was desperate to have come so far only to be all alone. Princess Bea had moved on to the Palacio de Ventosilla at Aranda de Duero where her family would be staying. This was because the front-line units of the Nationalist air force were being regrouped as the Primera Brigada Aérea Hispana at Aranda, alongside the Italian Aviazione Legionaria in Zaragoza and the German Condor Legion in Almazán, the walled medieval town due south of Soria. General Alfredo Kindelán, with overall command over all three forces, had established his headquarters at Burgos. It was Pip’s good fortune to get a room in the hotel where General Kindelán’s family were staying. They told her that Mercedes Milá planned to send her to a front-line hospital. There was a terrible scare when word was brought to the hotel that Álvaro de Orléans had crashed. His Italian wife Carla Parodi-Delfino was hysterical and Pip had to calm her down. She then went on to the Palacio de Ventosilla. To the relief of Álvaro’s escape, there was added the dual pleasure of resolving her future as a nurse at the front and of seeing Ataúlfo. Touffles told her that she was much thinner and very beautiful. However, that delight was dampened by Princess Bea, who knew that Pip was in love with him. The Infanta told her the first of a series of slightly conflicting stories by way of breaking to her gently that Ataúlfo would never marry her. She said, rather implausibly, that he would never recover from having his heart broken by the daughter of Alfonso XIII, Beatriz. The romantic in Pip was both intrigued and devastated to be told by Princess Bea that Touffles was so affected by this that she was ‘afraid he will never fall in love or get married and will just get more and more the young man about town and have mistresses’. 63

Meanwhile, the men of the family were flying bombing missions against the Republican forces that were closing in on Teruel. The proximity to the war was beginning to affect Pip. ‘It really is an awful life when you know your friends are risking their lives every single day and every time you say goodbye or just goodnight you think you may never see them again.’ Her diaries reflected her links with senior officers of the Nationalist air force. She felt an ever closer identification with the cause: ‘Today [28 December] we lost one machine and shot down seven reds.’ Today [30 December] they brought down eight Reds, four Curtis, two Martin bombers and two others and we did not lose one. Good work!’ ‘We shot down eleven Reds today [4 January 1938].’ ‘We shot down eight Reds today. The right spirit. [5 January 1938].’ The strain of seeing Touffles only fleetingly as he often popped in between flights was trying her nerves and increased her determination to get to the front line. Her wish was granted, in mid-January, by a telegram instructing her to go to the hospital at Alhama de Aragón, southwest of Zaragoza on the road to Guadalajara. She was reluctant to leave the Orléans family but a move was inevitable because of a reorganisation of the Nationalist air force. Prince Ali’s air force unit (escuadra) of Savoia-Marcchetti 79s was moving to Castejón while Ataúlfo’s Condor Legion bomber unit was moving to Corella. Both Castejón and Corella were between Alfaro and Tudela in Navarre and Princess Bea was going to Castejon in order to set up a house for her husband and son. 64

In fact, when the orders came, the entire household was plunged into various forms of colds and influenza. The worst hit was Ataúlfo and Pip decided to stay on and nurse him. However, proximity to her loved one did not bring happiness.

I am in the depths of depression and so nervous that I don’t know what to do with myself. I can’t sleep and have not done so for three nights which is not surprising when I have to spend my whole day keeping a firm grip on myself not to appear to be in love with Ataúlfo. I don’t know whether I am getting less controlled, more frustrated or more alone but it is pure hell whatever it is and leaves me in a state of being unable to sleep, unable to eat and feeling miserable.

The imminent upheaval meant that Pip would have to leave anyway. The malicious gossip about her relationship with him made it impossible for her to stay and nurse Ataúlfo without Princess Bea in the house as chaperone. Pip’s misery was dissipated by a meeting with Bella Kindelán, the general’s daughter, who was a nurse at Alhama. When Bella told her that it would be possible to go from Alhama with a mobile unit right up to the front, she cast off her melancholia and threw herself into nursing. 65

By 24 January 1938, Pip’s prolonged Christmas holidays were over and she was ensconced along with the other nurses in the grim hotel in Alhama de Aragón which partly served as the local hospital. It was bitterly cold and depressing. The winter of 1937–8 was one of the cruellest Spain had ever suffered, the bitter cold at its worst in the barren and rocky terrain of Aragón with temperatures as low as –20° centigrade. Pip was missing Ataúlfo and there was nothing for her to do. She had been joined by Consuelo Osorio de Moscoso, the daughter of the Duqesa de Montemar. Alarmed at the prospect of spending time in their tiny unheated room, they impetuously decided to take matters into their own hands and go to Sigüenza where Consuelo knew some doctors. They hoped thereby to get to the front. However, when they reached the emergency hospital there, they were told that the front-line mobile units were fully staffed and had very few wounded. On their return to Aragón, they fell into an even worse gloom. ‘There is nothing to do anywhere. The war seems to have paused and no one wants nurses.’ 66 This was far from true. The battle for Teruel was still raging. Within ten days of the city falling into the hands of the Republic, the advancing Nationalist forces became the besiegers. The scale of the fighting can be deduced from Franco’s remark on 29 January to the Italian Ambassador that he was delighted because the Republic was destroying its reserves by throwing them into ‘the witches’ cauldron of Teruel’. 67 Astonishingly, this was not reflected in the traffic through the hospital at Alhama where Pip was now assigned to a ward.

Much of her work was routine and unpleasant. One of her patients had a spinal injury – ‘as he has lost all sense of feeling, he pees in his bed and we have to change the sheets which is both difficult and messy as he can’t move at all, also he has no pyjamas and boils all over his bottom which is most unappetising. As for the other part of him, it is definitely an unpleasing spectacle which somehow always manages to be just where I want to take hold of a sheet.’ However, the routine was short-lived. On 28 January, Mercedes Mila arrived to assign nurses to other hospitals. Consuelo and Pip pestered her to be sent to the front. At first, their pleas fell on deaf ears and the head of the Nationalist nursing services said that Pip was too young to be given responsibility in a dangerous position. However, with more senior nurses reluctant to go to the front, they were picked with three others to go to Cella, eight kilometres from Teruel, the nearest hospital to the front. Pip was excited and immediately thought of Ataúlfo, ‘I shall see them all going over to bomb everyday perhaps. I can’t wait to go, my spirit of adventure is aroused.’ Although she was aware the hospital might be shelled and bombarded, her principal concern was whether her nursing skills would be adequate when the lives of the seriously wounded were at stake. 68